The researcher initially explored educated women’s dealing with violence. While reading other literature, the researcher analyzed ambiguity on relationship between education and violence. The researcher drew its findings from two phase, first from pre-study field work and second is main study field work. Following section explains how this thesis is developed
29 For more information, please refer to http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/default.html.
Accessed 16 April, 2018.
30 Please see
http://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/reports_and_publication/statistical_publication/social_statistics/Cha pter_3.pdf. Accessed 16 April, 2018.
4.1 Development of the project
The pre-study fieldwork was carried out with the help of two qualitative methods, which are Expert Interview (EI) and Biographical Narrative Interview (BNI). The pre-study field work data analysis31 findings revealed that:
• All Indian women are victims of one or another forms of violence.
• With education women are conscious of violence on them but they are not in a position to raise their voice against violence.
• There is an impact of other external factors such as media in institutionalizing patriarchy in the country.
With these pre-study findings, the researcher decided to explore the following themes for an inductive investigation. These are:
§ How education empowers women.
§ How media and religion impact women’s empowerment.
§ NGO experts’ efforts to empower women in contemporary India.
§ Change in the forms of violence Indian women faced.
The researcher collected the main-study data with Expert Interview method. EI is a method of interview with experts. For the thesis, the researcher interviewed experts working for women empowerment. As the thesis adopted inductive research approach, aims at generating a theory rather than testing. The researcher first started with questions on impact of education on violence. But with the pre-study analysis the researcher explored different themes to assess status of women’s empowerment in the country. The themes are discussed in the methodology chapter of the current thesis. The empirical data gathered is further illustrated
31 The pre-study analysis is explained in detail in finding chapter of the current thesis.
with BNI data which was collected during pre-study field work and previous literature. The researcher collected total 28 interviews during pre-study and main-study field work.
The researcher collected 28 interviews with experts. She analyzed the empirical data with the classic grounded theory (CGT) (Glaser 1978). The data is analyzed with CGT with an aim to discover an all-inclusive theory.
4.2 Structure of the Thesis
The thesis is divided into nine chapters. Following introduction chapter, the second chapter discusses literature review. The chapter reviewed past literature on education and its impact on women empowerment. The first section discusses association of education and violence. In the second section, the researcher reviews formal, informal and non-formal education and its impact on empowerment.
The third chapter briefly discusses the process of method collection and procedure of data analysis for the current thesis. The first section of the third chapter discusses rationale for qualitative research, the pre-study field work and rationale for choosing the research area
“Pune”. The second section discusses, two data collection method and demographic information of respondents who participated in the current thesis. The third section explains the grounded theory analysis, different versions of the grounded theory, classical grounded theory and procedure of classical grounded theory. The last sub-section of this chapter explains credibility of the grounded theory.
From fourth to seventh chapter discusses, the emerged grounded theory “The Theory of Victimization of Educated Women in India”. The fourth chapter of the current study discusses core category and sub-core category and their properties. The fifth chapter discusses two-related categories “approaching” and “interfering” with their properties. The two-two-related categories are two stages of the basic social process called “changing the way of living”. The
“changing the way of living” is discussed in the chapter sixth with their five properties. The
seventh chapter explains the emerged classical grounded theory “The Theory of Victimization of Educated Women in India” by integrating different categories and their properties.
The eighth chapter of the current thesis integrates cognitive literature with the discovered grounded theory and discusses the emerged theory with cognitive perspective. The conclusion chapter of the thesis assess the discovered grounded theory by explaining four criteria of evaluation and study limitation of the current investigation.
As per Classical Grounded Theory guidelines, the literature is reviews after analysis of the data. Though the researcher reviewed literature before pre-study field work, but for the main study field work the researcher followed the CGT guidelines. In the following chapter, the researcher discusses the pre-study and main study literature.
Chapter two: Literature Review
As aim of this study is not testing any theory as discussed but to generate a new theory.
As this process is complex and multi layered, the researcher weaves this literature review around the content of education. While writing this chapter, the researcher faced a great deal of obstacles due absent of literature on status of women empowerment in the country. To overcome this obstacle, the researcher has integrated cognitive literature and concepts to the findings, yet this chapter literature review discusses the past literature on education which brings social change and critically evaluate their content to know empowerment status of women in depth.
It is universally acknowledged that education plays vital role in women empowerment.
Women empowerment is defined as a bottom-up process of transforming gender power relations, through individuals or groups developing awareness of women’s subordination and building their capacity to challenge it (Ogato 2013; Dejene, 2003; Baden and Reeves 2000;
Baden and Oxaal 1997). In this bottom-up process, the researcher mainly focused on how women have challenged traditional social norms, male domination in a society and confronted violence on them. The rationale for the focus is to investigate whether education has empowered women in challenging patriarchy and has improved the status of empowerment in the country. To fulfil this aim, the researcher mainly focused on investigating association of violence and education. This pre-study mainly focused on various forms such as domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual and mental harassment in any form. Thus, pre-study literature review focuses on association between education and violence to understand role of education in the process of empowerment.